Time and time again I recommend that you choose a niche product to dropship from your website or sell on eBay. But how do you choose your niche? The following are brainstorming tips to help you come up with a niche product that can be sold online.

First: Check Your Purchases. Many prospective online entrepreneurs try to think of really out-there products like unicycles or bamboo knitting needles so they can enter a market that isn’t too saturated. This is a good idea in some respects, but one of the most important factors when choosing a product is to choose something that people actually buy online. One way to brainstorm this type of product is to think what you yourself buy online.

In the past month, I’ve bought three second-hand novels written by Mildred Walker, a pair of studded motorcycle boots, a Hebrew-printed t-shirt, tickets to a murder mystery play, a pair of Cubs swim trunks, and a calligraphy set. Not surprisingly, almost all of my purchases represent niche markets. Why is that? Because with the exception of a few broad categories like electronics, most items bought online are niche products. This is because common, general products can easily be purchased at physical locations close to your home. You go online to find unusual items that can’t be bought at the mall.

Second: Check Logistics. Let’s assume that I want to dropship my products, not purchase them wholesale. This means that some of the products I purchased last month are out of the running for my niche inspiration. Used books aren’t generally dropshipped, and neither are theater tickets. Shoes and clothing are usually sold wholesale, but in this case the items that I bought might still be appropriate since they weren’t common apparel and accessories. The studded motorcycle boots might be a good candidate for a dropship niche product for a few reasons: first, they are a product that’s not easily found in local stores. I bought those boots online because after searching the three malls in my area I couldn’t find anything quirky enough to satisfy my Sarah Connor Chronicles obsession.

The studded motorcycle boots are a good pick for another reason: they’re a theme product that I could easily build a whole product line around. With the boots as my central product, I could have a goth/punk/emo website, a motorcycle apparel site, or a studded leather accessories site. Finally, while I might not be able to find this product through a dropship supplier, they are expensive enough that I could possibly use a wholesaler to dropship them. Let’s say my wholesale supplier has a $100 order minimum: if a single pair of studded boots costs $125, I can likely have single pairs shipped directly to my customers even though the supplier is ostensibly a wholesaler.

New businesses come and go every day and innovation is part of each of those new businesses. Starting a new business takes conviction and guts but it also takes money. So if you have got an innovative idea that you want to see turn into a prosperous business but you don’t have the financing you need then it’s time to explore small business loans to see your idea come to life.

If you are hoping to get your venture off the ground but not only don’t have the cash you need, you also don’t want to put your assets up as collateral, and in these situations, business loans are a great idea. They require you to put up only a small amount of assets as collateral, and for you as the borrower this is a close as it gets to a no risk loan. You can’t ask for much more than that!

When you obtain one of these business loans there generally isn’t any restrictions on how you must use the money within your business. You might use it to buy stock, assets you’ll need like computers, for raw materials, machinery, or put it away to pay for wages at a later date. Whatever you’ll use the money for, the key is that the lender doesn’t restrict you.

When considering business loans it’s important that you take some time to research the various lenders because not only do they offer different business loan packages they have different interest rates, and different qualifications. You also want to determine the reputation of the lender to ensure there’s no problems down the road. It never pays to deal with a lender that may not appear to be on the up-and-up, no matter how good their terms seem to be. And there’s always the old stand by “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

If your credit isn’t so hot due to an unavoidable situation in the past, not to worry because there are business loans that can be easily obtained. The interest rates might be a little higher but definitely worth that cost, just to be able to obtain such a loan. It’s also a great way to get your credit back on track and start to rebuild it. With a little research, you can also find the best interest rates for this type of business loan too.

Small business loans let you get money to take your innovative idea from a dream to a reality. No collateral, no restrictions, and good credit or bad credit there is a business loan for you out there.

Because we live and work in a dynamic market situation, managers must accept as the normal state of affairs that all products have a limited life. This fact is commonly expressed in the form of the product life-cycle curve. Products during their existence go through the phases indicated on the curve, as follows:

1. Starting before, sometimes long before, a product reaches the marketplace, there is a development phase. Market research must be undertaken, the product designed, prototypes built, plants laid down. While costs can be very high, income will initially be nil and will probably grow only slowly. Profits are a long way off yet. Many products are slow to ‘catch on’ and this part of the curve typically does not rise steeply.

2. During the growth phase the product reaches general acceptance, and sales increase steeply. Profits mount as development costs are recovered and unit costs decrease with greater volume of production.

3. As the product reaches maturity, initial demand is beginning to be satisfied, competitors may have arrived on the scene, and there will be greater reliance on replacement sales. Sales increase more slowly, and profits come under pressure and may start to decline.

4. When the market is fully saturated, sales will ‘peak off’ and profits decline still further.

5. Finally, sales will go into definite decline and margins come under very severe pressure as it becomes increasingly costly to maintain sales at a reasonable level.

The curve for any particular product may be steeper or flatter, the time-scale may be longer or shorter. Some products seem to go on for a very long time. For this reason the pattern must be applied with care. In addition, we must be careful what we mean by a product in this context: for example, the market for glass has risen steadily over the past 50 years, but within this period the sale of lamp glasses has declined and that of milk bottles has risen steeply (to decline again in some countries in face of competition from waxed cartons or plastic and the change from doorstep delivery to bulk purchase from the supermarket).

Nonetheless the typical pattern stands as a warning that it is dangerous to rely too heavily for too long on one product, so that, as profit from one declines, profit from its successor rises to fill the gap. Ideally this will give a steadily rising profit for the company as a whole, even though some products have entered the ‘decline’ phase of the product life-cycle.

It must be emphasized that the product life-cycle diagram is not a rigid description of exactly how all products always behave. Rather it is an idealized indication of the pattern most products can be expected to follow.

There is nothing fixed about the length of the cycle or the lengths of its various stages. It has been suggested that the length of the cycle is governed by the rate of technical change, the rate of market acceptance and the ease of competitive entry. So, each year numerous new fashion styles are introduced, many of them to last only a few months. At the other extreme, a new aircraft must have many years of life if it is to be commercially worthwhile.

The main importance of the life-cycle concept is to remind us constantly of the three following facts:

1. Products have a limited life;
2. Profit levels are not constant but change throughout a product’s life in a way that is to some extent predictable;
3. Products require a different marketing programme at each stage of their life-cycle.

Implications of the Product Life-cycle

If we have to accept that no product will go on earning profits indefinitely, then we must plan so as to have a whole succession of new products coming ‘through the pipeline’. Peter Drucker has drawn attention to the need to keep all products under review to ensure that not too high a proportion are at the end of their life-cycle. He describes the following six categories:

1. Tomorrow’s breadwinners – new products or today’s breadwinners modified and improved;
2. Today’s breadwinners – the innovations of yesterday;
3. Products capable of becoming net contributors if something drastic is done;
4. Yesterday’s breadwinners – generally products with high volume, but badly fragmented into ‘specials’, small orders and the like;
5. The ‘also raps’ – generally the high hopes of yesterday that, while they did not work out well, nevertheless did not become outright failures;
6. The failures.

Product Elimination

From the product life-cycle concept and Drucker’s analysis of product categories, it follows that all products must be kept under review to assess their present and likely future contribution to profits. A common mistake of marketing management is to keep in the range products that have little or no prospect of contributing to profits. Products are kept in the range until they fade away, meanwhile consuming valuable resources, which could be more profitably utilised elsewhere. These marginal products lower the company’s profitability, and it is essential to control them.